I decided to focus on the cab and bed today and take a little break from all the frame, suspension, powertrain work. Plus I have parts all over the place, and I need to start assembling them, just to be sure I don't accidentally give away, sell or scrap something useful.... it has happened to me already!
With help of my faithful assistant, Abby, I put the bed back on the frame.
This is helping me remember why I started on this endless project to begin with.
The bed is from a 62 donor truck, so the bed rails have the mount points set for the wider x-frame. I snagged the rails from the original truck's long bed before I sent the rest of the heap to the scrapper. The original bed wood and strips are long gone with just a couple sections of 3/4" plywood for a floor. For some reason the PO decided to put fifty thousand 5/16" carriage bolts down each bed rail, even though the perimeter bolts would have sufficed. Obviously I have been dreading this day as I knew that at least half of these little bolts would be rusty and not spin off. I was surprised that many of the nuts did come off easily, but as luck would have it, almost none of these were the perimieter bolts which are the only ones that I really need to come off. Bummer. The solution is easy though; I'll just cut a few lengths of 1"x1/4" bar and tack weld a whole row of bolts heads to it. Then I can go underneath and beak all the nuts off. Then zip the bolts from the 1/4" strip and start on the next section. Shouldn't take long.
Then I had a decision to make: I have three cabs, all with one good feature that the other two don't have, and I have to choose one.
- The first cab is on my old 64 2wd is a factory A/C cab, perfect dash, small back window, with barely any rust, but has some sheet metal damage from an accident in a prior life. The damage is not visible from the exterior, and you have to know where to look to see it, but it will always bug me, and isn't easy to fix.
- The second cab came from an old PG&E service truck, has a perfect dash with no accessories whatsoever (clean slate), big back window, but has a lot of rot in the lower firewall, floor, rockers, kick panels, etc.
- The third cab is of unknown origin. It has a clean straight dash, small back window, and some minor rust near the rockers in the usual places, but nothing drastic.
I want a big back window for sure. I drove my 64 around with a small back window for the last 12 years and want to upgrade. So I'll cut the big window panel out and transfer it to one of the less rusty cabs.
Now I also have always liked the uniqueness of the factory A/C cab. But I've never had functional air conditioning in my pickup, the center vent is just a showpiece. Moreover I despise the bulky stock HVAC components. The huge unit under the dash takes up a ton of space, plus the huge deluxe heater in the engine compartment is a bear to work around. So I think I'll probably just snag the center piece from my 64 before I sell it and stash it away for use later on.
Ultimately I decided to use the third cab since is is the most solid base, convert the big back window, and keep the smooth dash for now, and use block off plates for the cowl and firewall vents. I'll probably use a thrift air setup I have from the 62 donor that has a small heater core and blower located in the cab. I have a set of deluxe heater controls I can swap in and adapt to control the thrift air.
I really like to look of the smooth dash. An oddly enough I'm really digging the ash tray, since I've never had one before!
I pulled the standard heater out, pulled the chopped up wiring harness out, pulled the pedal box out and started fresh.
Installed a 20 gallon gas tank (but it has rust and needs to be replaced
) and the seat.
Put the hydraulic clutch pedal and actuator from the 62 into a 66 pedal box. (More on this later once I get my adapter plate made for the firewall) Disassembled all the pedal pivot shafts and sleeves, cleaned and re-greased everything. Operates nice and smoothly now. Reassembled and mounted the box.